XSW is a pure multiplayer game, with lots of action (there is nothing to do when you're alone - might add some bots in the future)... so grab some friends and log in, and start blowing each other up! The more the merrier!

I've done a small notifier program that will let you know when anyone logs in (Notifier.bat). It's my geeky voice telling you when someone logs in - if you want another sound just replace the file XSW/sounds/login.wav with something else .

Also there is a mapeditor included, so you can create maps. To actually use them in the game they need to be sent to me for inclusion though.

If you get bad ping on my server, you can host your own server... just run XSWServer.bat. If you live outside europe it's probably a good idea.

This is the first version where I've gone from TCP to UDP... so I wouldn't be suprised if there are bugs.

Some notes. Don't flame me for not webstarting it... I know about it and will implement it when I get time. For now it's a zip and you run it with a bat file. So Windows only. (will probably work on Linux/Mac as well by replacing libraries and make another script file).

Also it's java 1.5 only.

Check out the configure keys menu... there are a bunch of keys to know about. Learning to use strafe is necessary to become any good. Pressing twice in one direction will make a small jump (dodge move).

For now it will use the native resolution and color depth in the OS. So if you get bad fps, try lowering your settings and run again. (Will make a menu to do it soon...)

f10 - shows frame rate.

The three numbers in the bottom right corner are (top to bottom): Shields, Health, Ammo.

In the future I will add team play, and a ranking system, more weapons, ships and cool devices. (while still trying to keep it simple).

If it can't connect to the Master Server it will hang, there is no time out yet, but I can stop it with ctrl-alt-del...

I will fix a more reliable connection procedure and post soon. (but it will take a few hours as I am going away now). I looked at the code now, and I send the udp message just once... so if it gets lost you're out of luck. Everything worked fine with tcp since it wouldn't get lost... I've changed pretty much everything to be reliable with udp except for the connecting to master server...

I worked on a more stable connection process to the master server... but introduced some nasty bugs that took alot of time, so the update will have to wait for tomorrow. In the meantime, if you get lucky with the first udp message going through... you can play, it seems to be pretty stable if you actually managed to log in.

I noticed a bug that in the server list it always lists 0 players connected. I introduced that bug while making the notifier. Now the notifier shows the correct number of people logged in, but the server list does not. Will fix this tomorrow.

Now I'm off to bed. Hopefully we can get a game going with several people soon. Playing with 4 or more people is a real blast. Did I mention there is killing spree levels, double kill, multi kill as in unreal tournament . This is the first version with maps... before there were only random asteroids. The map is pretty big for only a few players, I'll add a smaller one tomorrow. It's no fun flying around for ages without anyone to shoot!

Hmm well I connected to somebody's server, and managed to play, but I could only find asteroids to shoot. Unfortunately no matter how many missiles and laser I shot they wouldn't explode.

...soo I managed to kill myself twice at least

Anyway, on a more serious note, seems like a really cool game. Obviously there's a few issues right now with collision detection (got a few odd angles and occasional fire went through the walls... ship would also jerk to the side randomly) but it's in a very playable state and well put together. Gunfire variety is nice, though it seems like a few weapons don't work properly yet. I noticed when I was flying at full speed with the large white ship that I couldn't actually shoot the "double green-blob" weapon. They traveled about 20 pixels and then seemed to hit my own ship and disappear (though it didn't hurt me). And is it intended that the starting weapon doesn't always shoot the maximum number of lasers (seemed like there was a on-screen shot cap).

But yea, enough of the minor issues. Physics seem very good, I love the way the camera rotates to maximize your view, and missiles are fun to launch. I also noticed you put in the ability to detonate a missile in mid-air, a very good idea in my opinion. Gives a little more strategy and helps keep them unique and useful (i.e. they're not just "more powerful lasers").

I put up a new version... but straight away noticed some bugs, so I took it down again. So now there is actually no version to download now... I'll try to fix it as soon as possible.

The bug with shooting your own ship, I must have introduced when making the shotgun able to shoot yourself. Before no shots would collide with your own ship so there was no problem. I will fix this.

I guess some problems with collisions could have to do with ping... client and server sees different things. I know the shotgun will jump through walls when fired right next to it, will look into solving that. The starting weapon shoots a number of rounds and then has to cool down for a bit, it's intentional. The shots actually travel until they hit something though, so they can travel to the end of the universe...

In fixing bugs with connecting to the server I introduced some new... that seems to be able to totally crash the server... that's why it's not up anymore... :-(. It'll probably take 1 or 2 days before I get around to fix it now. Server for 0.013 is still running... but the client is not downloadable anymore.

Well, I actually think I fixed it in very small time... So 0.014 is up again, as an added bonus there are now 2 new ships!

I tried flying full speed shooting the plasma, and didn't get them blowing up in my face... must be something caused by lag, as I have practically no lag here, will have to look into it more.

Now the server is running a new map... a smaller one that should be fun to play with 2 - 5 people. The first to reach 20 frags is the winner... and the level will restart. The server can change maps after someone has won, but for now it's just the one map up.

I'll be up for a game most of the time... but I've been practising alot, so you might find it frustrating to meet me 1 on 1 before you get the hang of steering the ship. As nva225 said... there is a bunch of strategy involved when you get good. Like some weapons are good against other weapons. The shocker (blue sound wave) is like a shield that will take down any weapon but it won't touch the missiles. Other weapons can blow up missiles in one shot, and shoot them in your face... Things like that makes the game actually require alot of stratergy and smart play. However there is no defense against the big red... Facing that you will die...

Well, now I'm off to bed. Please try out the new version, and see if it is easier to connect. If you still cannot connect it could depend on your firewall. By editing the XSW.bat file and putting -port ### last on the line you can tell the client which port to use. Then configure your firewall to let traffic pass through that port.

nva225... that jerk to the side, could it be you pressing strafe twice rapidly? Then it makes a dodge move, that might be seen as a jerk I guess. (some ships can do this). Not sure if I will keep the dodge move in the final version yet...

Hmm, well, I just tried it again (had to host my own server, yours wasn't up) and it seems like all the issues I had before no longer exist. I'm sorta thinking some may have been due to some effects of lag and the host just catching up.

For a while I managed to get a 3 person game going and it was really fun, but Raz02 seemed to be the only map small enough for that number of people. We played through a couple 20 frag games on that and it worked well.

So... fun as it was, there seems to be a few balance issues present right now. By far the most powerful ship appears to be the Executor, the one with the triple-laser cannon. Seems like if you're caught in front of that ship you don't have much of a chance. Lasers, while not insanely powerful on their own, seem to be able to destroy every weapon except the force wave. So, fire missiles, they explode on you, fire those blue projectiles, they pop, and fire the shotgun or force and the ship bounces back and shoots you from a distance. The only way to kill it is to get close, strafe around it, and fire at it from behind. I don't think the lasers destroy the energy beam (the really fast projectile), but they seem to do more damage over the same period of time and thus win anyway.

And then... bigger ships in general just seem better. I tried the other big ship and basic dumbfire tactics seem to demolish any of the smaller ones. But maybe I just haven't seen anyone that skilled with the smaller ships... I don't know. Hopefully I can play against you sometime.

Edit: One important comment I forgot to make. Whenever my computer is hosting one of the larger maps with the numerous small tiles, I get really bad framerates, like 2-5 fps. The computer is 2.0 ghz, has 640 mb of ram, and is using a Geforce 6600 GT; this should be capable of running a host and displaying a few simple sprites. With the large-tiled maps like Raz02, there is no such issue, so it seems like it would have to be due to graphics load though I wouldn't expect it to be. Any idea what's causing this and if it could be fixed/optimized somehow?

Great that you were able to run your own server! You're the first to do that... so it's great to see it work! =)

Anyways, it was me that was in for a short session (The Emperor)... but I got so much hickups and lag that I really couldn't play well at all. I just logged in a short while before going to work. I had a fat eclipse session in the background, and after playing noticed that I had my own local test server running as well... so I got garbage collector stutterings every other second (this doesn't happen when not running a bunch of other things)... it made it impossible to avoid anything shot at me... , I'm really not that bad in reality...

And, yes there is only the one small map yet. raz01, and raz02 are maps I've made... just threw them together fast before releasing the map version. The others some other people have made. You're welcome to create some more maps if you like! It's just to run the mapEditor and start building (very easy)... you can add your own tiles and objects as well (there is a pdf describing this on the site). There will be more maps soon... my friend is working on other tile themes as well, so there will be more varying maps. And I'll add some active map elements as well... things to shoot apart, doors to shoot open, warp zones etc...

But we'll play again and see if I can handle the small ships better. I've been playing with my friends quite alot, and some are really good, and then the big ship is just a sitting duck... very hard to avoid any shots coming at you. So we don't use the big ship that much... but for new players, the big ships are superior. I made the big white (Executor) a bit faster in this version... cause I thought it was too bad before... The Destroyer is new in this version so you were the first to try it... and I think I gave it to much health... I will lower that. I'm not sure the big ships will be in the final death match version, they might be in team play only, as ships that will be spawned in your base... might even have several people jumping onto the same ship with some people steering canons only

But I agree that there are some things that needs to be balanced, I'm constantly looking at that.

I haven't told my friends about the new version yet... they've been out of town for awhile... but now when they get back we'll get some good games going!

I noticed my own server dying... so there are some bugs yet... I think it went into some sort of eternal loop when it got some bad messages. Think it will be quite easy to solve. Anyways, it was good to see how it was when playing with high ping... I now have some ideas of what to do to make it abit smoother. But I need to play more with high ping, and do some testing...

On the hosting thing... There seem to be abit of a problem hosting on the same as you run client... I get hickups then. I'll see if I can make it better... the server isn't really that demanding... I run my game server on an old celeron 500mhz comp and it runs fine... It even works with two servers running at once... but the client somehow gets troubled by running a server on the same comp... Maybe using server vm will make it better..

Looking forward to playing you again... with less things running in the background... :-)

There crept in a bug that will put the server in an eternal loop when a client was terminated and did not notify the server. This happened twice, and was why the server wasn't responding. I have now fixed it and version 0.015 is up. There is also a small patch you can dowload that will upgrade version 0.014 to 0.015. Also some ship settings have been tweaked (not much but a little).

Now the server should be more stable and be able to cope with faulty messages.

If you're playing from the states (or somewhere else far from Sweden...), consider running your own server for much better gaming experience. Best is to run a server on a separate computer. If you get ping rates of approx > 100 to my server you might experience some lag problems as have been discussed (shots blowing up in your face and such). The ping rate listed on the server is not very accurate though... the server is just pinged once and the value taken (if message doesn't reach destination you will get ping > 500 even though you might have good ping in reality)... will improve this for the next version.

Configure your own keys for better flying experience - I can't fly with the default settings at all . Someone suggested them to me, and I put them in... what I use is

So... fun as it was, there seems to be a few balance issues present right now. By far the most powerful ship appears to be the Executor, the one with the triple-laser cannon. Seems like if you're caught in front of that ship you don't have much of a chance. Lasers, while not insanely powerful on their own, seem to be able to destroy every weapon except the force wave. So, fire missiles, they explode on you, fire those blue projectiles, they pop, and fire the shotgun or force and the ship bounces back and shoots you from a distance. The only way to kill it is to get close, strafe around it, and fire at it from behind. I don't think the lasers destroy the energy beam (the really fast projectile), but they seem to do more damage over the same period of time and thus win anyway.

And then... bigger ships in general just seem better. I tried the other big ship and basic dumbfire tactics seem to demolish any of the smaller ones. But maybe I just haven't seen anyone that skilled with the smaller ships... I don't know. Hopefully I can play against you sometime. I wouldn't expect it to be. Any idea what's causing this and if it could be fixed/optimized somehow?

One more note on the apparent overpoweredness of the big ships. When you are fighting against someone with a smaller faster ship, a skilled player will most often after taking some damage be able to escape and recover out of harms way. The opposite is not true, the big ships are slow and can never escape after taking damage, thus when your health goes low you will most likely die. Also when you are playing more players than two, the shots doesn't just come straight at you... but from all directions. And then being able to avoid is more important than big shields... The big slow ships are the easiest target to hit for everyone and will often get killed quickly. For 2 new players playing, going at each other till one dies, bigger shields and more shots will mean victory... but not so for skilled players. So I don't think they are as overpowered as they first seem. Also a skilled player can often avoid being hit by standard laser (even though the triple are harder to avoid), while some other shots are nearly impossible to avoid...

But, there are of course imbalances that I hope will resolve through more testing and playing.

Ok, I can login with the latest version, haven't had the chance to play against others yet though...

I really like the gameplay and the look and feel of the game!

I think that blowing up big meteors, scattering them into smaller ones (fx with missiles or a certain amount of hits) would be a nice feature.

One thing I noticed was that when you have your ship float very slow in a direction the tiles seem to scroll jerky (or even wavy at sometimes). Maybe its caused by the viewing angle adjusting between rapidly between a small value?

Ok, I can login with the latest version, haven't had the chance to play against others yet though...

I really like the gameplay and the look and feel of the game!

I think that blowing up big meteors, scattering them into smaller ones (fx with missiles or a certain amount of hits) would be a nice feature.

One thing I noticed was that when you have your ship float very slow in a direction the tiles seem to scroll jerky (or even wavy at sometimes). Maybe its caused by the viewing angle adjusting between rapidly between a small value?

Thanx for the feedback.

You could blow up asteroids in the first version, but the world was quickly cleared of asteroids so I removed it. Of course I could let them respawn after some time again in a different position. I might implement this again. I will add lots of more active things to the maps... tiles that needs to be blown up to reach certain weapons and stuff... so there will be more than just other players to shoot at ;-).

I know about the slow scroll problem. It's because positions are floating point, and then the textures become located between pixels sometimes. It wasn't noticeable before the tiles with sharp lines on them was added, so I haven't done any thing about it before. I forced positions to be integers in rendering just now, and then it works pixel perfect for the resolution 1280x960, where no scaling of sprites and tiles occur. But the problem still remains at other resolutions as the textures themselves are scaled then. I looked into pre scaling textures, but using java's image scaling capabilities the result was much worse (texture quality while rendering). Don't know why the software scaling would be so much worse than scaling on the fly by opengl, the pixels need to be crammed into the same space either way, but the result was really ugly with java scaling (tried all the opitions, smooth, default, fast. It was a little better with smooth, but still very bad).

Is there away to use lwjgl for scaling and then storing the result in the textures? Help would be apprecieated.

It is a shame that most of you who tried it didn't actually get to try it multiplayer. As that makes it alot more enjoyable... especially playing 4 or more.

Maybe more people will try it when I make it webstartable... but it'll take a while for me to get around to it.

Anyways, I need some help optimizing play during higher ping rates. If anyone would be willing to run a server in the states during the night (would be day here), that I could use for testing and get a better idea of what needs to be done it would be appreciated. I would need to make some updates now and again, so you'd have to be willing to downlad a small patch maybe a few times a week. (depending on how much time I have to develop). It might not take very long for me to optimize what can be optimized, but I don't know yet.

A question for you who tried it. Did you experience any gc stuttering while playing? I find that after having the computer running for a few days, with some big applications, I get alot of gc stuttering even if I close the apps down. Guess it's because the ram is fragmented, haven't found away around that yet. After a clean reboot it runs as smooth as anything, but I don't want to ask users to reboot just to run the game...

It's basically the same as 0.015 but adds one more map, and a few ship sprites have had face lifts. 0.015 will still work, but if the map from 0.015a is running 0.015 will not be able to join. A patch is available for download.

Also a better notifier has been added, this also lets you see how many notifiers are online. (And is started by an executable jar file so no ugly dos prompt).

No stuttering here, even when I run other Java apps in the background like Azureus. But then again I didn't have the game running for a few days like you mention

About the hosting, I haven't got a server in the states, but I have a backbone connected badass server at my disposal over here in The Netherlands If you're interested pm me about it.

Thijs

Didn't mean having the game running for days... just my computer running for days with several big apps running.

That server sounds very interesting. Probably wouldn't help me for optimzing high ping connections... but it would be great to run an extra server on! Maybe could even have a server with a really large map with lots of players!

More servers will definitely be needed when I start spreading the word more...

Thanx for playing! I am sorry your computer rebooted... (don't worry people, it was his comp overheating, not my game causing it to crash ). Look forward to play you again.

We had a great 6 player game running tonight, lots of fun! Although the map felt a bit too small, will have to start running bigger maps soon... . Ideally we should have one server with small maps and one with big at all times. Also a server for newbies, so the experienced players knows not to be to nasty.

Cool game. I'm looking forward to a good match with a few other players.gal

Thanx. The easiest way to get a game with other players is to leave the notifier running for awhile. Then you can see how many are waiting for a game in the notifier, and also how many are playing. I strongly suggest using the notifer when you want to play.

We usually get a good game going one or more times during the day, but it often happens on some odd times. The past week we've run many 4 - 5 player games a little after midnight, GMT +1 time. But this varies, so use the notifier to see what is happening!

About the notifier: it would be a lot nicer if it updated the players/notifiers online in the title bar so you dont have to flick over to it ever so often, also it would be nice for it to have a "Launch Game" button on it.

I have played a game with 4-5 players once, i have the notifier on sometimes and although has never shown less than 2 other notifiers online i havent played another game.

g666, thanx for the great advice! It will make the notifier alot better, will implement it straight away. particularly like the launch button.

If there are some other notifiers online those people might join in if you login... when you login to xsw it plays a sound so all notifiers will now someone logged in. But when starting the notifier it makes no sound, so people might not even know there are other people on notifiers

I wanted to make the notifier flash in the taskbar when someone logged in... but it seemed to be needed to do some tricks, needed some 3rd party software so I skipped it.

I have a bad habit of always leaving the notifier on... so most likely I'm one of the people with notifiers on... but I also join the game most of the time when someone logs in. But don't start a game myself often.

Soon I will put up a new version with more maps, 2 new missiles (one homing missile and 1 small fast), a new ship and a few very important bug fixes that could cause the server to crash. It will be up in the next few days.

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